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Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless and The FCC Chairman, Kevin Martin are on stage at All Things D. And in an instant, Mossberg is ON KEVIN’S ASS for the US’s slow, expensive broadband! “You’re the chairman of the FCC, how did you allow this to happen?”
Kevin basically responds that there isn’t enough subsidation in the US.
Mossberg moves onto openness of the networks.
Kevin Martin is saying that both consumers and entrepreneurs both want it. So in the last auction, they put a condition in that the spectrum needs to be open to any handset or application. And our willingness to embrace that is important. We’re not completely there yet, so that every major carrier is embracing openness.
Kara: Would you have done this openness thing before Google spoke up?
Verizon: You see in Japan and Korea that what networks can do when open. But in the past, customers wanted to do things like downloading apps to their phones. And that increased as the broadband speeds picked up.
If someone builds a device that isn’t efficient, or uses too much bandwidth, we have to be careful. The shared resource [of the wireless network] is not like a DSL line. (Funny, isn’t that what the net neutrality enemies are saying is a shared resource, too? B.L.)
Mossberg: Will rates be the same for plans using phones that we didn’t buy from you?
Lowell: They will be the same, but the functionalities might be different, because of your handset. (Obviously —B.L.)
Mossberg: So you’re purely a provider of network services then?
Lowell: Yes.
Mossberg: Let’s talk about cancellation fees. How to you justify charging people $175-$200 to cancel plans that have already worked through their subsidation.
Lowell: We don’t do that anymore, as of a year ago. In Italy, they don’t allow subsidization for these reasons. We tier our termination fees so that over time they get lower. And we sell all our phones without any subsidies as an option but 98% of the people choose the contract. If subsidies were outlawed, we’d have no problem and no other carriers would, too.
Kevin: It should be declined over time if its a recovering fixed cost. There should be a reasonable amount of time to take your phone/service home and try it out. There’s a 14-day allowance for this. Some people are wondering what restocking fees should be, too.
If sales figures aren’t enough reason to show that the PSP is really making some progress in Japan against the DS, how about the fact that it was used in an upskirt crime? According to the Japanese police, or JaPoPos, a 59-year-old college administrator was looking up a skirt belonging to a 19-year-old girl on a train line. He was arrested using anti-stalker laws, and if he’s convicted, it’ll probably lead to even better sales of the PSP and the PSP camera peripheral in Japan. [NikkanSports via Livedoor via Kotaku]
Case-mate has announced the release of a “groundbreaking” new product designed to protect your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod Classic (60 and 80GB), or Blackberry Curve from scratches using a military-grade Scotchgard film from 3M that was originally designed to protect Apache helicopter blades during Desert Storm. The film is also completely clear, so there are no bulky, ugly cases to contend with. But the real question here is: does it blend? Well, let’s find out:
iPhone/iPod touch only: Freeware application iSlsk is a Soulseek peer-to-peer client for the iPhone and iPod touch which can download MP3s from the Soulseek network directly to your device. Once you’ve downloaded a song, iSlsk imports the MP3 directly to your iPod so you can play it alongside all the rest of your music. Sounds too good to be true, right? It almost is. The video after the jump demonstrates just how incredible iSlsk is, and the catch:
Currently all songs iSlsk imports get wiped away when you sync your device with your iTunes library. Despite that one drawback, after installing and trying out iSlsk, you won’t be disappointed.
Your iSlsk downloads continue in the background even when you leave the app, so it’s fully prepared to let you multi-task while you suck down music from Soulseek users. Granted, the clearing of downloads on iTunes sync is a bummer, but if you’re dying to hear a song while you’re away from your computer, iSlsk will do the trick. And if the delete-on-iTunes-sync ever gets fixed, we’re talking all kinds of promise. To install iSlsk, you need to install the Community Sources package on your jailbroken iPhone. (iSlsk is part of the BigBoss repo.) Haven’t jailbroken your iPhone or iPod touch yet? Here’s how to get the job done in 45 seconds.
Motorola has finally announced that it is taking a hard look at its Mobile Devices unit and might very well give those slackers the ol’ Freescale treatment and spin off the division as a separate company. This sort of love ‘em and leave ‘em tactic is oddly a bit of a habit with Motorola when times are bad, and times certainly have been better — Motorola’s phone unit lost $388 million this quarter, compared to $341 million in earnings a year ago. Motorola may sell the unit or spin it into its own company, which would leave Motorola with precious few intersections with the RAZR-saturated consumer, and as more of a government and enterprise business. Says Greg Brown, current president and CEO: “We are exploring ways in which our Mobile Devices Business can accelerate its recovery and retain and attract talent while enabling our shareholders to realize the value of this great franchise.” It’s a pretty odd statement for any company to make, and considerations may be further along than they sound, but either way I’ll be keeping an eye out for any developments.
